I opened the Sunday newspaper and about fell out of my chair. In frightening, 75 font-sized letters, ones typically saved for only the worst of catastrophes, such as, say, an underground volcano erupting in downtown Columbus, the headlines read the following: BLIZZARD OF 2008.      

I suddenly had the sense that I’d dodged an assasination attempt on my life, that I’d ignorantly settled down for a picnic inside a lion’s den, and, by sheer chance, escaped without a scratch. Here I’d spent the Blizzard of 2008 cracking jokes, deleting spam mail, asking what’s for dinner, treating it as any ordinary winter weekend, while nature, in all its wintry fury (sore, perhaps, over the imminent return of spring?), had declared war on the Midwest, threatening to bury our houses to the shingles, sealing us forever in a snowy tomb. I might as well have had an absent-minded tea party in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.  ”Pass the crumpets, please.”

Oddly enough, however, a comparison to war may not be far off. Although at the time I stood oblivious to any hints of danger to myself, I did detect a potential threat to our squirrel-sized dog, Phoebe. To put it simply, the backyard is our dog’s latrine. The snow on the ground had already accumulated several inches, enough to bury Phoebe to the neck. This posed a problem, since her fur is the color of snow, and if we had tossed her outside, a snow drift may have swallowed her up, and we’d have to wait till spring, when all the snow melted, to find her again. 

Armed with only a shovel, I dug a WWII snow trench in our backyard. This was necessary to prevent Phoebe from using the bathroom inside the house. While I worked, Jess occupied the open backdoor, keeping an eye out for enemies and, most important, for any deserters, namely Phoebe, who stood trembling in the wake of the path I had just cleared. 

At first, the trench bore a hard line, stopping abruptly a few feet out from the house. But the dog took badly to its cramped design. She touched her snout to the snow and sniffed timidly. With a clump of white clinging to her charcoal-colored nose and with her tail tucked between her legs, she did an about-face and made for the warmth of the house. Deserter!

With perfect military execution, Jess placed herself in front of the doorway, ending Phoebe’s feeble escape attempt. It was back to her Arctic potty. Phoebe did the only thing she could do: she licked the air and turned to face the elements. Just then, an icy, Lake Eerie wind kicked up. Phoebe’s floppy ears smoothed neatly back to her skull. Her tiny, white head rounded into the circle of a cotton ball. Another blast of wind, and she made slits around her oil spot eyes. Her pink underside shook.

“Go potty, Phoebe,” I said. 

She was expected to “go potty” in this?

 To move things along, I improved the design of the trench. I ran the trench around the corner of the house, where I scooped out a small clearing, to give Phoebe more privacy and room to maneuver. It was still cramped quarters, though, but in the end, Phoebe squeezed in several tight circles and did her business.

“Good girl!” I said. Phoebe then scuttled back inside the house. 

Victory was ours. The battle was nature vs. nature (if you consider Phoebe, being of the animal kingdom and all, as nature), and Phoebe had fought a good fight. We laughed at her struggle, at her silly animal instincts. But little did we know the joke was on us, for we stood unknowingly in the midst of the Blizzard of 2008.  

Categories: About a dog, Nature
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Driving to Marion Correctional Institute on a cold Saturday afternoon, I played Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” in my head. Besides “Jailhouse Rock,” it was the only prison song I knew. 

Who’s to say if this helped lighten my anxiety. All I knew was that sometime ago with the church I’d nonchalantly signed up for my first prison visit, thinking little that that day of service might actually come. And now - tada! - here it was. 

Our car carried us mind-numbingly up 23, toward our dreaded destination. Jess sat passenger, warming up her voice with the songs on the radio. She’d agreed to sing at the prison church service and would be the only female on stage. For all I knew, it’d been months since the prisoners had last laid eyes on a woman. I chose to think about Johnny Cash, instead.  

I dimly remember having a slightly selfish motive for going. Somehow, someway during the trip, I hoped to build more compassion for the downtrodden and for humanity, in general. What better way to do so than to toss myself into the center of the dregs of society.

Once there, I half-expected the prison chapel to be a dingy gymnasium. There’d be a makeshift stage and some plastic chairs set outside a beat-up, chain-linked fence for containing the prisoners. I imagined the guards occasionally clubbing a prisoner on the head if one tried to reach through and grab a piece of one of us. Innocently, having never set foot in a prison, I knew only this kind of scene. Perhaps, it came from too many movies, from the various concoctions of jailhouse life Hollywood has served up over the years. 

But, things looked a bit differently. The prison chaplain, a quiet bearded priest with a collar and a ball of keys on his hip, led us through several prison gates, closing each behind us with a definitive clank. Through the network of iron bars, I watched for signs of chaos or take-over attempts. I saw no prison riots, no Hannibal Lectors, either. Oh, you had the prison bars, the razor wire, strung along the compoud walls like deadly tinsle, and all of that, but minus these minor distratctions, the prison chapel looked, well, like a church. The room was spacious, the ceiling rose several feet, and an aisle split two lines of wooden pews.

Hmm…where do the prisoners sit? I saw no fences, no cages, nor anything else to keep us safely secluded.  Maybe they’d come chained together in black and white striped singlets, as was George Clooney and his buddies in Brother Where Art Thou? and forced to sit in the back with stern-faced guards in sunglasses standing over them.

“How many women you got coming?” asked Pastor Buddy, the prison pastor, a bald, friendly man who had used a cart to help transport our band equipment across the prison.

“About five or six,” I said, unsure. Although I tried to act indifferent, my eyes must have given away my thoughts: why do you ask?

“They won’t hurt anyone. Most of the guys are Christians. But keep the women seated inside of you. Some like to ask for phone numbers and addresses. Don’t give it to them.”

 Don’t worry, Pastor Buddy, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Before I could raise the long list of other concerns I suddenly had, such as prisoner-to-guard ratios and where the best place to go incase of a tornado, Pastor Buddy had moved on, leaving me alone to consider the increasing horror of my thoughts.

For the next half hour, I sat stiffly in the front pew, watching Jess and the band set up on stage. I considered the endless dangerous possiblilites of sharing a pew with convicted criminals. Would they start pushing me around about where I live? I shivered at the thought, or was it from the icey draft from the open barred windows.

Then, I worked through several scenerios of muscle-bulging inmates, smiling menacingly as they carried Jess away. Trying hard to squelch any instinctual thoughts of every-man-for-himself, I turned my focus to how, if the occassion called for it, I might protect my wife. My muscles suddenly felt useless and weak. Chaos was inevitable.

Like Jason Bourne, I scanned the place for useful objects to defend Jess with - a music stand, a microphone, my belt? How much more effortlessly could an inmate turn the same objects on me? I wouldn’t stand a chance. Suddenly, I pictured myself on the ground, helpless, arms covering my face, at the receiving end of a keyboard, a crash of dissonate chords breaking the air with each blow.

But then something gave me a moment’s relief: on my side, would be the adrenaline of pants-wetting fear. This promised an element of superhuman strength to my flick of a body, the kind that gives a toddler the strength to lift a car off his pinned parent. Wild with fright - this was my only means of defense.

To get a grip, I went exploring. The service was scheduled to start in an hour. To set up, the band and I had arrived two hours before the other church volunteers, so besides us and a few nice volunteers in navy pants, the room was empty.

In the back of the chapel, I found some christian literature available for the inmates. I leafed through a few pamphlets. Then, before venturing out, I poked my head outside the room. I scanned the solid block walls and linoleum flooring of the hallway to make sure no prisoners had got loose before it was time. I did not want to end up a human bargaining chip for some desperate criminal trying to bust out of the Big House. Hey, I must admit, stereotypes I didn’t even know I had filled my head. I’d seen Shawshank Redemption and various scenes of Cool-hand Luke; I though I was wise to the going-ons in prison.  

My hallway adventure lasted only a minute before I made my way back to the safety of the chapel room. In the doorway, I ran into a bright, cheerful man who I’ll call Roy. He was on his way out, without a trace of fear in his face. This put me slightly at ease. I laughed inside, feeling ridiculous for overreacting all this time.

“Hi, I’m Roy,” he said, offering a friendly handshake.  Roy was lanky and bald, and wore a tightly-trimmed gray beard with a matching gray sweatshirt. His face beamed. He wore navy pants, so right away I pegged him for a volunteer. Although, I did not know what church he was with. 

I introduced myself and reached for his extended hand.

“I’m looking forward to worshipping with you today,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” I said, awkwardly.

Then, he took off happily down the hallway in search of a friend.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed before I saw my new friend Roy again, lounging in a pew and chatting with other volunteers in navy pants. I joined Roy and his friends, took a seat in the pew behind them. Roy turned and gave me a warm smile, which instantly included me into the group. I got some more questions ready to ask him, such as what church he went to? and, how long has he served in the prison ministry?

I figured, as long as I stuck with Roy, when the prisoners rolled in, I’d be okay. He really seemed to know his way around. 

“I’ve never been to prison before,” I confessed (like he couldn’t tell).

My words surprised me halfway out my mouth, because suddenly something clicked. I understood something I had missed earlier.

“What’d it feel like when those gates closed behind you? Weird, huh?” said Roy.

“Yeah, it was kind of weird…”

Wait a minute…navy blue pants… Nearly everyone around me has them on. I’m a volunteer, and I’m not wearing navy blue pants. What’s Roy’s tag say: I-N-M-A-T-E…ooh!

“I’ve been here sixteen years,” said Roy. “When I first got here, it was a very dark place. Of course, I was a heathen then. But God is doing great things in here. You can feel his Spirit at work.”

A young man sat next to me, clutching a Columbus State University class scheduling booklet.

“I get out in ninty days,” he said.

He planned to go to college and get a degree in business management. Then he told me about his plans to one day open a ministry for the youth called 3-to-6 - the peak time when kids got into the most trouble. Nonprofit businesses need managers, too.

“But the main goal is to save souls,” he said.

When the rest of the church finally arrived, many wore the same nervous, unsure faces I must have worn. Won’t they be surprised to learn about the good men who live here, harmless, loving, ready to serve, filled with a thirst for God, identifiable only by their navy pants and their broken hearts.

Nonetheless, my heart went out to my fellow church members. I sympathized with them as they absorbed their cold new surroundings with wide eyes and uneasy smiles, trying to pick out the inmates from the rest of us, trying to crowd out the piercing question with an open mind: Are the prisoners dangerous?   

“Can I get you some coffee? water?” Roy asked me.

“No, I’m okay, Roy. But thanks for the offer.”

Categories: Christianity, Community
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